Sunday's letters: Buchanan co-sponsors tax cuts, red tide can't be ignored

Buchanan seeks tax cuts during crisis

U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, who represents Florida's 16^th Congressional District, and more than 70 Republican co-sponsors just introduced a bill to make permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions expiring in 2025.

The fact that Buchanan and cohorts are proposing enormous boons for the wealthiest Americans and corporations – by cementing in former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts – is unsurprising. But it is hypocritical for them to push for this while also howling about deficits and threatening to plunge the U.S. into fiscal disaster.

Beyond previous TCJA effects on tax revenues, the Congressional Budget Office has projected net costs of extending the temporary cuts at $2.2 trillion for individual and estate taxes and $500 billion for business provisions, totaling $2.7 trillion through 2032.

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Such extension would deliver average annual savings of $175,000-plus to the top 0.1%, by Tax Policy Center calculations.

Meanwhile, the Treasury has reached the current $31.4 trillion debt limit. The CBO projects “extraordinary measures” allowing continued borrowing will be exhausted between July and September 2023. If the ceiling is not raised by then, federal government payments will be delayed and/or the country will default on debt obligations.

Rather than windfalls for the wealthy, should Congress not protect programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

Jan Schneider, Sarasota

Spreading Hillsdale doctrine nationwide

Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, the fundamentalist school whose stultifying curriculum Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to inflict on New College, has bigger plans.

Arnn wants to infect schools nationwide with Hillsdale doctrine, and DeSantis is a willing ally. Arnn’s curriculum is the 1776 Project, Donald Trump’s “patriotic education” scheme. In fact, Trump appointed Arnn to promote it.

Ridiculed for whitewashing history, the 1776 Project guides Hillsdale’s network of 70 charter schools, seven of them in Florida. It has also steered Florida’s recent civics education reform and helped to get dozens of math books banned.

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Hillsdale refuses federal funds because, Arnn says, they “corrupt liberal learning,” but he doesn’t seem to mind indoctrinating public schools with fundamentalist dogma.

To raise money, Hillsdale uses its magazine "Imprimis” to churn out far-right propaganda that masquerades as scholarship and addresses such erudite topics as “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax.”

Fundamentalists often stray into politics, but few have Arnn’s right-wing connections. The Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute and Claremont Institute, which he founded, spawned half of New College’s new trustees.

Arnn and DeSantis are two ambitious men with no concern for the common good. Theirs is no theoretical conspiracy; it is a generational threat to education and democracy that is unfolding before our eyes.

Stuart Smith, Sarasota

State interfered with ranked choice voting

The front-page article in the Feb. 19 Herald-Tribune, “DeSantis and state lawmakers targeting local governments,” missed an example of the Legislature preempting local government.

In 2007, Sarasota voters approved ranked choice voting with 77% support. Its implementation was delayed by state government until March 2022, when the Legislature prohibited RCV statewide with Florida Statute 101.019.

Why did the Legislature prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in all federal, state and local elections?

Many city elections have multiple candidates running for a single seat; these are either won with a minority of voter support or cause an expensive runoff. Both could be avoided with an RCV election.

This becomes increasingly relevant as Florida legislators file bills to increase the politicization of city councils, county commissions and school boards by requiring local candidates to be affiliated with a political party.

These actions are intended to increase the power of the political party; they are not in the best interest of voters.

RCV is nonpartisan and leads to more choices, more civil campaigns and better representation. RCV has been successfully used in more than 400 elections in 28 states. Visit https://www.rankmyvoteflorida.org.

Vilia Johnson, Longboat Key

We can't ignore impact of red tide

Red tide is a dystopian ecological disaster. It is killing fish. Birds are dying. Our health is being affected.

Soon the tourists will stop coming. Property values will plummet.

Florida H.R. 1008, which would provide federal help for affected communities, is a bandage that does not address the real problem.

The toxic algae have been in our waters for eons; the problem is the nutrient feeding it. The uncontrolled use of fertilizers by agriculture and landscaping, and the wastewater runoff from millions of gravity septic systems result in the harmful bloom.

The economic impact will be far worse than any hurricane, and it is essential to address this problem now.

Walter Frank, Longboat Key

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Bad time for GOP to push tax cuts, Hillsdale spreads propaganda